The Global Wind Atlas provides the spatial wind resource data that most renewable energy screening workflows start with. Wind potential is highly terrain-dependent — a ridgeline, coastal exposure, or valley constriction can dramatically change wind speeds over a few hundred meters — and the atlas captures this by downscaling ERA5 reanalysis data to 250-meter resolution using DTU's WAsP wind flow model with detailed terrain and surface roughness inputs.
Developed by the World Bank and the Technical University of Denmark, it gives wind farm developers, government planners, and development banks a free, globally consistent baseline for identifying promising sites and ruling out unfavorable ones before committing to expensive on-site measurement campaigns.
Like its companion Global Solar Atlas, the wind atlas is designed for screening and pre-feasibility — not final investment decisions, which require site-specific mast or lidar measurements. But at the spatial planning stage, it's the most practical tool available: overlay wind power density with terrain constraints, grid infrastructure, land use, and environmental exclusion zones to narrow a national or regional search down to a manageable set of candidate sites.
The multi-height data (10m through 200m) also lets you match the analysis to specific turbine classes, and combining it with the Global Solar Atlas reveals locations suited for hybrid wind-solar projects where complementary generation profiles can maximize site utilization.
